


To Protect

by OblivionSparkle



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Fenthras is being difficult, Mention of the Grey Hunt, The canon is only smudged a little bit, Vex is stressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-12
Updated: 2019-02-12
Packaged: 2019-10-26 18:26:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,666
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17751161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OblivionSparkle/pseuds/OblivionSparkle
Summary: Vex'ahlia struggles as she watches her friends find themselves and empowers their vestiges.





	To Protect

**Author's Note:**

> I’ve always wondered if Vex was upset at all by being one of the last to awaken her Vestige. So in my curiosity I wrote this little drabble thing instead of working on homework. Hopefully you all enjoy, and let me know what you think in the comments! There’s some slight smudging of the timeline between Vesrah, Keyleth’s coronation, and going to the Nine Hells.It’s not noticeable, just vague obscuring of the time that occurred between going to the Air Ashari and leaving for hell.
> 
> I currently do not have a beta reader, so I have proofread this as much as I had time to. Hopefully It has no major mistakes, but I will make an effort to correct them if they are found. 
> 
> Spoilers up to: Episode 96 of Campaign 2 and maybe slightly after that. Read at your own risk.

Vex’ahlia glared at the bow in her lap, watching the branches that composed it twist and curl towards her fingers and away from it. The laughter from her friends, sitting far below her at the base of the tree she perched in, was drowned out as she traced her vestige from one end to the other. Their joy wasn’t enough to drown her frustration and anger with herself this time.

 

She hated this bow.

 

Sure, it was her Vestige of Divergence. The strength she brought to the fight against the Chroma Conclave was meant to come from the weapon in her hand. Percy told her over and over that she was it’s rightful wielder, and that she’d earned that right by defeating Saundor in battle. Vax reminded her how excited she’d been to feel the bow in her hands, to run her fingers along it’s curves and feel the stretch of the string as she drew it back with an arrow notched. Day after day they tried to convince her Fenthras was more than what it was, that it was stronger than Vax’s armor and dagger, Percy’s cloak, Keyleth’s staff. Yet, their weapons had awoken, their power brought forth by their wielder’s soul’s aligning with theirs.

 

Fenthras couldn’t rain fire from the skies. It couldn’t absorb magical damage, or bring it’s thrower with it as it was thrown. It couldn’t protect her from searing flame or striking lighting. It couldn’t strike with the power of her voice, or increase her size to that of a giant’s.

 

Instead it shot vines and grew trees on the rare occasion her arrow brought the end of their foes. The other’s had managed to grow and evolve their vestiges, bring their power under control. She couldn’t even process what hers was supposed to mean. When she thought about it, it hadn’t even been her that killed Saundor. It was Grog with his lance, standing over her protectively, that had killed the archfey and won her prize. How was she meant to awaken the damn thing when she couldn’t even take it for herself.

 

“Are you coming down from there, Vex?” Percy called up the tree. His voice barely a whisper against her intense focus on the bow.

 

“In a bit, darling” She responded. Vex could practically hear the worried frown on his face. Had he been a bit more daring he might have climbed up the tree after her. But she knew Percy well, and knew he’d never take the risk of falling from this height, especially so far outside Whitestone. So instead he sat himself down at the base of the tree, where she caught him staring up at her periodically from the corner of her eye.

 

“This is a stupid place to be, stubby” She audibly sighed as the new voice joined her, turning to her right to find Vax with his elbows against the branch next to hers, wings outstretched and flapping gently against the air under him. “What are you doing all the way up here?”

 

“Thinking” Vex responded curtly, turning her eyes back to the bow. It’s wood twisted around her fingers as she touched the end of it, leaves brushing against her knuckles. “I like being in the air”

 

“What has you so worried?” Vax asked. He situated himself at the end of her branch, leaning toward her with both hands clasped to the branch. Her brother had never been as sure-footed as her with heights, much preferring shadowy alleyways and darkened tunnels. “Is it this?” He touched the bow, feeling the twisting wood under his hand.

 

“It’s never going to awaken, is it?” She asked softly, gripping the center of her bow hard. “I can’t awaken it. I’ve killed dragons with it. People. I’ve saved us by killing monsters before they could eat us. But it won’t wake up”

 

“It’ll wake up in time. It jus-” Vax began. She cut him off with a glare.

 

“Yours woke up just by talking to a god. Keyleth woke the spire ages ago. All Grog had to do was fist fight a monk in a temple and Scanlan just sang to Mythcarver and he never even uses it!” She snapped. “Everyone else has the power of gods at their hands, abilities that no one should ever have. But instead of growing with everyone else I’m stuck with this” Vex shook the bow in her hand, causing a few of the leaves sprouting from it to shutter. “A creepy bow from a dead archfey who wanted my soul.”

 

“Fenthras is a vestige, it’s very powerful..” Vax touched her shoulder, his other hand shaky on the branch.

 

“It was powerful for Saundor. It nearly killed me” Vex squeezed the bow harder, willing it to shatter in her hands. The wood remained untouched, it’s branches and wood still writhing in her hands. “But now it’s just a gardener. It makes trees on the rare occasion that I actually manage to give anything to battles.”

 

“You contribute plenty,” Vax sounded almost offended at the notion. “Vex, Fenthras is powerful. You just have to be patient.”

 

“I can’t be patient when people die, Vax” Vex hissed between her teeth. “Scanlan died. Percy had his guts spread across the floor by Raishan. I couldn’t do anything against her, nothing. The damn brambles couldn’t even hold her for more than a few seconds before she shattered them. It took making her brain dead before I could even think about killing that damn dragon”

 

“That isn’t true. You’ve helped us plenty. Remember when you saved Grog from the goliath herd?” Vax said softly, his hand squeezing her shoulder.

 

“One time. Once. Before we had the damn vestiges.” She replied bitterly. Vex finally shrugged him off, searching for the broom that she’d balanced on two neighboring branches. She slipped off the branch after muttering the words, balancing on the bobbing wood underneath her. “I’d rather use my spare” She thrust Fenthras at her brother, lifting a few feet away from her brother and directing herself into the trees that surround their makeshift little camp.

 

Vax calls after her, tries to follow into the darkness the setting sun has left. But these trees are her home, not his. And she loses him in the woods.

 

\- -

 

A few weeks later she stands looking at her bow again, deep below the sun tree with the earth and Trinket packed around her. Vex is reminded again that this bow lives, is living, in her hand as she examines the twisting branches. It had been singed by their trip to the city of Dis, some of it’s branches and leaves having brushed against the walls around them. She’d been worried when she saw the state of it as they arrived back in Whitestone, the tendrils of wood and plant blackened and nearly dead at the ends. Now, some time later, it was back to its former glory, the branches green and living and twisting around her fingers and hands.

 

“I’ve grown, haven’t I?” She whispers to the bow. “I’ve protected?” The bow stays the same, still writhing and moving in her grip.

 

She sets in to the side as she continues her meditating, calling out to the Sun Tree above her and the god it represents. Vex desperately hopes Pelor can see her down here, kneeling between the roots of the tree that Keyleth brought back to life. The air down here is stuffy and cold, smelling of mud and packed earth. It isn’t the most inviting places for a sun god, she thinks. Perhaps she should climb the tree outside and…Before she can finish the thought her consciousness is dragged from her. She feels vines wrapped tightly around her limbs and throat, their smooth texture broken by clinging mud and rock. She opens her eyes, finding herself pulled into the web of roots that stretch down below the sun tree. Before she can panic, her vision shifts again, now looking out at the glassy pond in front of her, deep in a thick forest. The creature she was promised emerges from the pond and bounds off into the woods, marking the beginning of her own trial by fire.

 

Vex’s eyes snap open and she’s thrust back into reality, back pressed against Trinket’s form and Fenthras under her hand. The bow seems to throb under her hand as she lifts it again, watching in the dark as bow seems to move faster, more intently. “Trinket! Trinket, let’s go!” She shakes awake her companion and bolts down the tunnel, bow in her hand as she runs.

 

When she finishes her hunt, exhausted and bleeding as she stares down at her foe, Fenthras feels heavier on her back.

\- -

 

The next morning Vex wakes covered in mud and dried blood, her hair tangled and soaked with sweat on her pillow. She’s slept for a full 24 hours, exhausted and tense from the battle she fought. Her muscles scream as she sits up into the early morning sunlight that streams onto her bed, and she leans against on arm in defeat as her chest aches with a deep pain. Lifting her shirt, she finds her chest and stomach covered in fresh bruises, turning her skin purple and swollen in the worst parts. A cure wounds leaves her fingers as she touches the deepest of the bruise, and she sighs in relief as it lightens slightly. She’ll have to see Pike before the day is up.

 

Moving from laying to sitting on the edge of the bed is a bit more difficult than Vex expected. Her stomach aches as she hangs her feet over the bed and bends to pull her boots, also caked in mud and grime, up over her bare feet. She hopes she finds a servant to draw her a bath before she has to see any of the others, she can feel the blood in her hair and dried along her skin where the creature had drawn it the night before. Slowly and methodically she pulls on dirtied clothing and armor, not bothering to find something clean before she’d cleaned the muck from her. When she gets to her quiver, laying against her nightstand, Vex pauses with her fingers on the strap. She hasn’t seen Fenthras yet that morning, and for a brief moment she wonders if she lost it in her mad dash back to Whitestone with the render’s hand clutched in Trinket’s mouth. A flash of deep brown and green catches her attention in the corner as she stands up, ready to go searching for her weapon.

 

Vex looks up. Fenthras is leaning against the wall across the room. Her breath catches as her eyes scan over it, only releasing when she realizes what she’s seeing.

 

The bow has grown. It is now longer, more defined in the slight curve and twisted vines that it ends in. It’s leaves are deeper green, and spread more liberally along the bow, some stretching to touch the string and binding it tighter into the weapon. Vex physically cannot breath as she scrambles to grab it, landing hard on her knees and smearing mud across the floor as she pulls it into her lap, the bow twisting around her fingers and gripping them with more purpose than before. She feels like a child, given it’s favorite toy repainted and new again after having scorned it for it’s dull colors for so long.

 

Grow. Protect. She’d read the words over and over again, wondering their purpose. Wondering what Fenthras wanted from her, and why no matter how many things she killed, no matter how many times she saved her friends and others from perilous doom. Now she understood.

 

“This is ours to protect” She whispered, using Elvish for the first time in months. The bow seemed to respond to her words, fitting into her grip tighter. “Your wrath….is mine.” Somewhere in the back of her mind, Vex wondered if Keyleth could teach her Slyvan.

 

“Vex’ahlia?” A sharp knock echoes on the door, accompanied by Percy’s soft voice. “Are you alright?”

 

“Fine!” Vex jumped to her feet, leaving Fenthras on the floor as she threw open her bedroom door. Percy stood before it, confusion written across his face as he took in the spattered mess of mud and blood across her clothing and armor. “Did you….did you go on another hunt while I was asleep, darling?”

 

“Percy, come in!” Vex seized his arm, dragging him into her room. She shuts the door heavily behind him and leans against it.

 

“Vex?” Percy has a look in his eye, probably unsure what exactly is going on. “I think you need a bath, and some more rest and then we can..”

 

“Shut up, darling. Please” Vex snatches the bow from the floor and hands it out to him. “Look.”

 

Percy hesitates as he sees Fenthras in her grip. Vex assumes he isn’t familiar with it’s shape in the first place, but she figures he can tell from her excitement. Percy’s hand touches hers on the center of the bow, tracing her knuckles as he scans it with his eyes. She can practically see the gears turning in his head, working in circles as he examined her bow quietly.

 

“It’s beautiful….” He began, his eyes meeting hers behind new glasses. “Vex’ahlia. I am so proud of you”

 

She smiles as he releases the bow, leaning over it in her hands to kiss her forehead. Vex’s fingers touch his wrist as he reaches for her, lingering for a moment as he continues. Percy makes to pull her into him, and she nearly obliges, before he leans close and takes a deep breath.

 

The sour face he’s making is almost worth it.

 

“Bath. I think you need a bath. And fresh clothing” Percy steps back, leaving her smirking as he tries to subtly remove the splotches of mud across the front of his coat.

 

“Of course, darling” Vex leaves Fenthras on her bed, letting it rest in the streams of sunlight. “Join me, dear? I could use some help getting this out of my hair”

 

“If it gets the copious amounts of blood and grime off of you, then anything for you, my dear” Percy says with a nod. “You look awful”

 

“I feel awful,” She sighed as she opens the door, already day dreaming about the warm water of the deluxe bath in the room attached to Percy’s. “Oh and could we get Pike? Grey…..whatever they’re called, I killed it last night, they hit very hard. It hit me with a tree, Percy. A tree”

 

“Oh of course, I’ll have her sent for and meet you in the bath,” Percy turned the opposite direction she was heading, his mind already turning for a hint at where Pike might have vanished to that morning. She hears his footsteps stop as she reaches the end of the hallway where another long, wide wing will lead her out of the guest rooms and to Percy’s at the end of the hall. “Wait, Vex’ahlia. It hit you with what”

 

She leans around the corner with a coy smile thrown in his direction, happily watching as he sputters and comes to the realization that he’d sent her out on a death sentence. “We’ll talk later, dear. Please, have Pike bring some of that lavender she gathered with Keyleth? I’ve heard it’s very good for bruising!”

 

Vex could hear Percy sputtering behind her as she continue on towards the wide, double doors that lead into Percy’s rooms; her rooms on a near nightly basis. She smiled to herself as she let herself in with a small, silver key that tucked under the necklace containing Trinket. Leaning against the door, she sighed softly. Eyes closed, breathing softly as she relished the moment.

 

“This is my home” Vex said softly to herself. “This is my place”

And with Fenthras at her side, no one, monster or otherwise, was going to take it from her.


End file.
